Artist Roy McMakin talks with people while standing near the wall of a commercial building (behind him) with 870 seven-inch-square bricks that are being painted individually from a choice of 60 different colors. Above on the scaffolding is one of the project’s painters Guillermo Arellano. CHARLIE NEUMAN U-T

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Artist Roy McMakin talks with people while standing near the wall of a commercial building (behind him) with 870 seven-inch-square bricks that are being painted individually from a choice of 60 different colors. Above on the scaffolding is one of the project’s painters Guillermo Arellano. CHARLIE NEUMAN U-T

“That person said blue or whatever. And then they looked to the right, to the person next to them; it just started.”

Without McMakin’s prompting, the question went all the way around the table of 18.

“Everybody was both interested in everybody else’s favorite color and desirous and happy to be sharing their favorite,” he said. “It reminded me so much of childhood, when you would talk to friends about your favorite color.

“I just think it’s interesting and about something. I don’t even have to figure out what it’s about — it just is.”

When McMakin was approached by the San Diego Foundation and its affiliate, the La Jolla Community Foundation, to do the second in a series of La Jolla murals (the first, by another UCSD graduate, Kim MacConnel, is at 7724 Girard Ave.), it seemed only natural to turn to color, especially as the foundation wanted the project to have a community aspect. His “canvas,” the wall at 7596 Eads Ave., was essentially a grid of hundreds of blocks, and McMakin decided to make each block reflect an individual’s favorite color.

“The idea just came to me how cool it would be to cover this wall with the colors that people felt represented something that was close to their favorite color, or the color that at that moment they most responded to,” he said. “Then people would drive by when it was completed and see a wall of many colors.”

McMakin was in La Jolla on Dec. 18 to oversee the project, appropriately titled “Favorite Colors.” In preparation, he put together a palette of 65 colors, from which people could choose a favorite. Although he didn’t do it intentionally, he was only one off from the number of colors in a standard box of Crayola crayons: 64.

“You always felt that was the one,” he said. “For me, if you had a smaller box than that, you felt you were missing something, and if it was bigger, you were sort of indulgent. Over the course of several days, with a friend that has helped me before with color things, I just went through the colors and we kept adding and subtracting. I think we had most people covered.”

Notices in local stores and La Jolla’s two community newspapers alerted people to the event, and 879 people showed up (even if some just happened to be walking or driving by), despite a damp, overcast day. Each chose a color, which was then assigned to one of the blocks on the grid.

“I was a little worried it would be seen as sort of cynical, or people wouldn’t really do it,” McMakin said. “But people took it seriously and it just reinforced what I believe − that color really matters to people in a very core way.”

While some informal online surveys have shown blue to be the most popular color, McMakin found the choices almost evenly divided. Some people even admitted they had been less than honest in the past about professing a love for the color blue.

“People heard people say, ‘If someone would ask me what my favorite color is, I would say blue, but it really isn’t,’ ” he said. One person reportedly said she would say blue because her mother liked blue. Another said blue was not his favorite, but he identified with people who liked blue.

“I mean, craziness, right?” McMakin said. “And so interesting.”

McMakin is an artist, not a scientist, perhaps best known for his furniture, which blurs boundaries between art and design (if such a boundary even still exists). And he’s convinced color preference comes from something deeper than conditioning or childhood associations. He’s certain color is genetic. Still, even he admits he can be influenced.

“I was helping someone do some furniture commissions and other (design) aspects and we were working with the color of this house,” he said. “And this woman, this extremely contemporary and sophisticated woman, loved Easter colors. She loved them with the deepest of passion, right?

I mean, for me, I was just like, ‘oh-my-god,’ because, I mean, pale purples and pale lemony yellow — that’s my idea of the worst color I’d ever want to live with, and this woman was so excited.

“She really showed me lavender in a way I had never seen it because of her enthusiasm.”